Notes on the Language of Vita Aesopi G
This version of the life of Aesop is known only from the one manuscript, which had belonged earlier to the library of a monastery near Frascati, from which it disappeared with no mention of it after 1789 till it was rediscovered in the Pierpont Morgan collection in 1929. It was published in 1952 by B.E. Perry at the University of Illinois Press (Urbana) in his fine Aesopica I, 35-77, with much other material, including a full account of the manuscripts of the other version of the life, W.MS. G is from the end of the tenth century. Perry thinks that the original goes back to the first century A.D. and reflects the strong interest in popular versions of Aesop’s life in Egypt at this period. It has a pronounced Egyptian colouring, Isis playing a prominent part in the naive and bawdy story, with a strong opposition to Apollo. Four papyrus fragments similar to G have been found (see Perry, op. cit. 1), and various Eastern versions of part of the story are known. The manuscript has many koine features that agree with Perry’s dating, and the language can often be usefully illustrated from the modern Demotic. Features that are more likely to be errors of tradition in the manuscript are mainly unimportant late spellings.